August 31, 2012

August Recap

Wow, this month has been interesting to say the least. It's probably easier to just bullet point everything and go from there!

- The beginning. Started off well, looking forward to vacation up in Muskoka with J and most of my family.

- Vacation was GREAT. Was so nice to just get away from everything and visit family and home. It's amazing at how much you really do miss things from home, even the small things and noticing how different stuff is from down here. And we're only talking about a 9hr drive between these differences. I can't tell you how much I miss Swiss Chalet, OLG Scratch Tickets, Advanced Green stoplights, and Cantonese Chinese Food from the little hole in the wall restaurants that taste AWESOME. And after a week we returned home.

- Returned to normalcy. Work is still the same, except with the added Mandatory Overtime which reduced the number of regular overtime shifts we had so a lot of us could not sign up for anything more than the mandatory overtime. The money I *was* going to make suddenly stopped.

- August 21. Day of my achilles surgery. Everything went good, even with the unexpected harvest of my big toe tendon to rebuild it. I was scheduled off from the 21st - 27th and was supposed to go back to work on the 28th. Now the fun begins.

- August 26th I bugged J to go back to Ikea to look and pick up some items to make our living room and office 'put together'. Well...I was riding on my knee walker and was going too fast, hit the wheels and it toppled from underneath me towards my left which made me put my left leg down (the one that had surgery). Not only did I just put it down, I put my FULL WEIGHT on it and felt a lot of pain. Needless to say I was VERY upset and in quite a bit of pain. The most worrisome part was that because I was in a splint, I couldn't see what 'damage' I may have done to the incision or if I detached the achilles. We got home and about 30minutes later my surgeon actually called to check up on me. He said everything should be ok and to try and take it easy.

- August 28th. My day to return to work. And I didn't. After my surgeon called, I started feeling a lot of pain in my calf. Think of the worst charlie horse you've ever had and multiply it. It hurt. A lot. I called the UVA outpatient office and when my surgeon's Physician's Assistant called she wanted me to come in to check for a blood clot. Great. Well bugger, UVA is 2 hours from where we live and J would have to come home from work (an hour away). Not going to happen that day. Go to the closest ER they say. So we went.....or started to. As I was waiting on J (ok I admit, I got impatient and I'm stubborn), I opened up the storm door to hop out to the front porch and the threshold grabbed my big toe on my left foot and I went flying out the door, over the porch and down the steps onto the pathway. I fell far and hard. Hey, if I am going to go to the ER I may as well make it worth my while.

- The ER. Final Results. Arrived at 2:30pmEDT, had an X-ray on wrist, exam by a Student, the ER doc, one nurse who saw me at 2:30 to take vitals and again at 6:30pm to take vitals because she was leaving (didn't see her once in between to check on me), an ultrasound (for the blood clot) and my new nurse, and the ER doc again. We left at 7:30pmEDT and I finally got my pain med at 7:00pm after asking for it at about 3:30pm.
I think that is all I will say about the ER trip, there is more I could include, but I think I will hold my tongue.
Sprained thumb, scraped, buised, and no bloodclot.

- August 30 an emergency follow-up with the surgeon to make sure I didn't damage his work. I am happy to report that I DID NOT. I was actually sweating bullets and apologized to the surgeon before he looked haha.
I got to see my stiches and incision site. It's pretty awesome. I will spare you the pictures (I made J take them lol).
It is still too early to remove the sutures so when I have my real follow up next week they will remove them and put me in a hard cast. They put me back into a splint for now.

- Today. I called and put in a claim for short term disability. As you may have read previously, my work had been giving me some issues dealing with FMLA for a couple of different claims. Including this one up and to just a couple of days ago. So, I went Short Term. Prudential Group Insurance is who we are through at work. I put in the claim at 9:30amEDT and received a call at 12:30pmEDT from my 'adjudicator', Chris, telling me that he's approved it starting at 4 weeks from the date of first absense. I think I nearly hit the floor. That was FAST! My surgeon's office had just received the paperwork and can't send it back until I give them a release! Chris basically said "you had surgery, we'll get the things we need. When do you expect to go back to work." My answer, I would like to go back as soon as I can, but seeing as I cannot do anything on my own without possibly falling and causing more injury....so you see my point.
Chris was awesome, he was like "no problem, I'll follow up with you after your next appointment. Feel better soon!"
So different than dealing with the nurses at work. Here was them today "So you're calling out? Ok I'll update your file" Me: "I am most likely going to be out for an extended period of time as I submitted a claim for short term." Them: "That doesn't matter, you still have to call in every day".
Yeaaaaaaah, we'll see about that.

So anyway. That's pretty much been my month. I have been home sitting doing nothing, and itching to do something! Laundry, cleaning, driving, or working! Anything, and I can't :(

Sorry for the long post....here's a picture of the flowers my grandmother sent me (my Nanny) :)

3 comments:

Oh my lady, you need to relax. You sound like you may just be as clumsy as me. :) I broke my leg and tore two ligaments and it was about just as horrible. Especially the not being able to do anything! That sucked.